Steve Bannon flatly denied a report that he threatened to quit from the White House, saying it is a 'total lie' planted by Democrats
It's a 'total lie,' Bannon said, pushed by 'Democrats getting crushed on policy.'
The former chairman of Breitbart News is seen as Trump's populist-conservative confidant and a balance to more centrist Republicans in the White House. His absence would dramatically swing the Oval Office away from the base that elected him.
Asked-point blank if there is any chance he's leaving the administration, Bannon replied: 'Zero.'
Bannon was removed Wednesday from the National Security Council's principals committee but is still part of the larger council.
Fox News floated a theory on-air that Trump had grown wary of Bannon's increasing public profile as a key behind-the-scenes power.
'We are also told though that maybe the president wasn't particularly happy with the way that Bannon had been grabbing the limelight, and that may have also played into all of this,' correspondent John Roberts reported.
Although he is far more camera shy than some other members of Trump's inner circle, Bannon has given a series of interviews where he revealed and defended his nationalistic philosophy.
'Darkness is good: Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power,' Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter after the elections he helped engineer. 'It only helps us when [the media and liberals] get it wrong. When they're blind of who we are and what we're doing.'
He added that the media is 'just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f***ing idea of what's going on,' which is why they couldn't better predict Trump's coming.
Bannon told the New York Times in January: 'The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.'
Trump's decision to add Bannon, one of his top political advisors and the driver behind his nationalistic agenda, to the NSC's principals committee created a stir among the foreign policy establishment and lawmakers who considered it to be a politicization of the panel.
His position is no longer listed among those on the committee, according to a new filing in the Federal Register.
Assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Tom Bossert also was downgraded.
President Trump ignored a question from a reporter on Wednesday while meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah about why he removed Bannon from the council.
LIMELIGHT? Fox News floated a theory that President Trump had grown wary of Bannon's increasing public profile as a key behind-the-scenes power
FOCUS OF PROTEST: Anti-Trump activists had put up posters about 'President Bannon' in Washington D.C. and seen them repeated on social media
The Washington Post reported last week how Bannon 'made his fortune as the quintessential global capitalist,' and reported how he brought a Saudi Prince to a music company purchase.
'Those out of the room are out of the deal,' Bannon told the paper. 'Once you make your way into the room, you stay.'
Financial disclosure forms put out by the White House reveal that in 2016, Bannon made $1.3 million. He earned nearly $500,000 from Bannon Strategic Advisors, $125,000 from Cambridge Analytica, a firm the Trump campaign used, $191,000 from Breitbart News, and $168,000 from his film company, Glittering Steel.
His was the first senior-level appointment announced by the White House.
Comment: After high-level White House leaks portraying Bannon as ready to quit, he told his associates the stories are "100 percent nonsense" and he's playing for keeps - "I love a gunfight!"